AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:01 pm
Lou Gold wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 2:19 am
AshvinP wrote: ↑Fri Nov 05, 2021 12:13 am
Yes, I can look at a tree, contemplate it, and not see that energy. Most people who are honest with themselves will say the same thing. Perhaps you and Ramana are the rare cases, which means you are very fortunate. The rest of us perceive everything from trees to the very dimensions of space and time abstractly, bereft of their living qualitative essence. What I am saying, though, is that there is still a tangled thread of Spirit which runs through all of these now abstracted phenomena and we can unravel it through our clear and precise cognition. That is the thread which BK denies, for no other reason than his philosophy dictates,
from the outset, that this thread cannot exist. So he never thinks to even look for the thread. The same exact sort of denial holds true for materialists. Until we unravel that thread back to its spiritual origins, we can only expect to remain in the sort of world devoid of genuine ethical interactions with nature and with others that we have today. At its deepst core, it is not a national issue, a racial issue, a gender issue, an agricultural issue, or any sort of sociocultural issue, but a spiritual issue.
"Yes, I can look at a tree, contemplate it, and not see that energy. Most people who are honest with themselves will say the same thing. Perhaps you and Ramana are the rare cases, which means you are very fortunate. The rest of us perceive everything from trees to the very dimensions of space and time abstractly, bereft of their living qualitative essence. "
Ashvin,
With total respect for your honest statement of personal perception, I would like to challenge it. Can't you look at a house plant and instantly see whether it is dead or alive? Perhaps it may be harder with a deciduous tree in the winter but surely not with an evergreen. And, in general, don't you quickly see/feel/sense the difference between a living being and a corpse. This is the "living qualitative essence" energy that you suggest that you don't "see". Are you the one who is so caught up in an abstraction that you are expecting something more spectacular? Can you really not see the extraordinary ordinariness of the "living qualitative essence" ???
Lou,
This is exactly what I am talking about. You are
assuming what we naively perceive as the "living tree" is the
totality of its qualitative essence that can be potentially perceived. This is 100% materialist position, which is fine for you to hold, especially if you are not really into this whole "philosophy" thing
But I wish you and people like BK would be more straightforward about it... if you think what is directly perceptible to normal intellectual cognition is the full living essence of the tree, then that should be stated. The [subconscious] reason it is not stated by BK is because that is dead giveaway he is holding to naive realist, materialist position. So instead he says, "that is the full tree for purposes of science, and the rest of the living tree essence we need to wait until after death to find out, or if we merge back into instinctive MAL, we will never find out".
The same mentality holds true for
every living phenomena that we can perceive. It is precisely because my normal intellect tells me, "this makes no sense... there is a living essence of the tree which cannot be captured by its physical quantitative dimensions or any juggling around of abstract concepts", that I am motivated to go searching for the deeper essence of the tree with my cognitive activity. I do not expect this deeper essence to simply fall into my lap by way of meditation, psychedelics, "grace of God", etc. That is
not how genuine knowledge arrives to me in any other endeavor, so why should it for the tree essence? Some are
satisfied with whatever is immediately revealed to their perception or after some mystical contemplation, which is fine. But, again, I wish that would be stated more plainly.
Ashvin,
Let's see if we can dialog here. It begins with not presuming to know the experience of an other. Better to ask. You have introduced a new qualifier in demanding perception of "aliveness" as a, "
totality of its qualitative essence." You did not ask if I claim this
totality. Let me respond so that you need not project anything onto me. As a storyteller, I will try to share more with images than with philosospeak in which I'm unskilled.
NO! I do not claim this perception for myself or claim that such
totality is a commonplace experience for others. I had only one experience, perhaps no more than a nanosecond-long glimpse 40 years ago, which was so life-changing, generative of new growth, unforeseen development and consistently firm that I can now describe it as my personal foundational experiential "faith". Not a mere belief or intellectual projection or abstraction, it has remained firm in the face of many challenges. But, I surely do not claim it as a
"totality". Also, I can not offer personal witness of Ramana Maharshi nor have I pursued his version of self-inquiry but my small familiarity, reading about him and etc, tells me that it seems safe to presume that he was much more developed in consciousness than I am. Why, or what do I recognize in such an affirming way? I recognize it in my own single nanosecond experiential glimpse. It's the reason that, although I am not on the Vedanta path, I have had a photo of Ramana with me or on my altar ever since first seeing it. About the
totality, which surely must include post-corporeality, I also have the Caravaggio image of Saint Francis meditating on my altar. The ways and views of Ramana and Francis are VERY different but there is some familiar evocativeness for me in both of these images. Something that I recognize as beyond mere intellect. Something that resonates or vibrates within me. It's not intellectual, although it probably would become so if I tried to describe it.
So what might this vibe of
totality be???
The Persian mystic poet Rumi whose ecstatic stream yielded about 70,000 verses plus several important spiritual texts and whose translations have become 700 years later the best-selling poetry in America, famously or infamously said:
You are not a drop in the ocean; you are the entire ocean in a drop. Yes, this is dangerous. A Santo Daime hymn, more cautiously, says:
"I am not God but I have an aspiration." Keeping this caution in mind, another great Santo Daime hymn concludes:
I am the shine of sun
I am the shine of moon
I give shine to the stars
Because they all accompany me
I am the shine of sea
I live in the wind
I shine in the forest
Because she belongs to me
And who is this
I am??? I had a life-changing glimpse resulting in what is so far 40 years of work on both the material and spiritual planes that gave me an aspiration, an aspiration that fails the moment I fall into any sense of separation. Now, in my end-zone, bearing the fruits of my many errors and still making some, I have fewer preconceptions and a greater appreciation for the many spokes (paths) on the great wheel of life and the glorious mysteriousness of it all, a great mysteriousness that I can only call Love. Perhaps, I, as well as multitudes of others, am the ones who can accept reality and can still love. Yes, it's an ongoing work.
Although I very much appreciate the way Bernardo's Analytic Idealism challenges the materialist reductionist dominant paradigm, his very conceptual analogs and metaphors are not inspiring to me. Only when I'm in deep suffering do I feel like a Dissociated Identity Disorder or an isolated whirlpool. In my more healed, more whole, more well moments, I sit at the Hawaiian shoreline watching the sunset light fading behind the tallest mountain on earth and feel a profound connection with ocean and rain drops and a very alive Divinely Integrated Diversity. I do not call this exceptional. Yes, the
totality of living essence may not be commonplace but surely the feeling of aliveness, even if only a mere remnant fragment of a thread toward
totality, is powerful indeed. I'm happy to perceive it as an "extraordinary ordinary." It is LOVELY INDEED!